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Will We Have A White Christmas?

With Christmas 8 days away, I’m getting the question “will we have a white Christmas?” quite often! First off lets take a look at our HISTORICAL chance of seeing snow on the ground December 25th.

As you can see by the picture, on average we here in West Central Ohio have a white Christmas about 25 to 40 percent of the time, or about one out of every three years. Looking at our past 5 years in Lima, 2007 and 2008 we did NOT have snow on the ground. 2009 and 2010 we DID have snow. And last year in 2011 we did NOT have a white Christmas.

Now that we’re getting closer to the day, forecast models are picking up on the possible trend for this year. As of now it is looking like our best shot at seeing snow on the ground for Christmas is if we can get some accumulating snow later this week from a strong system that will move through the midwest Thursday. The center of this storm is looking like it will track through northern Indiana and into Southern Michigan putting us here in West Central Ohio on the warm side of the storm on Thursday. As the front moves through we could easily see 1/2″ to 1″ of rain in the region.

As the storm moves through it will pull down some much cooler air out of the North with some wrap around snow expected Thursday night into Friday.

I hate to say it, but for now it doesn’t look like more than maybe an inch or two could fall here from this storm. For now, forecast models do not show any other chance for rain or snow through the holiday. If we did get accumulating snow into Friday morning the chance for that snow to remain on the ground through Tuesday would be pretty low. I’m definitely keeping a close eye on it though! Stay tuned!

One thought on “Will We Have A White Christmas?”

Tks–that was interesting! Is your contest over? I was going to put in an entry of 0 or 1/4 inch, but didn’t get around to it! The ground is fairly warm this year, so that made me think we’d have to dive off a temperature cliff to have much snow accumulation! 😉 Btw, do you have the weather data for Louisville, as opposed to Lima, for snowfall and/or temps. in Jan. and Feb.? I sort of know the differences, but I’ve never seen the stats!